The Great Leap, in Lauren Yee’s play of the same title, refers to the efforts of a Chinese-American teen leaping across the sea to find his roots; the efforts of a Chinese adult trying to leap away from his tendency—inbred by his life under Communism—to remain unnoticed and unexceptional; and, obliquely, to the Communist Party of China’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” campaign of the late 1950s.
It also refers to said teen, a five-foot-five point guard with the talent to outplay seven-foot giants on the court. The basketball court, that is; The Great Leap is a basketball play, on the surface, and a mighty good one.
American basketball, yes; but with Chinese ties. Saul Slezac (Ned Eisenberg) is a college coach who in 1971 (in flashback) is imported by the Party to Beijing to teach polite-young-party-member basketball players to play the sharp-elbowed American version of the game. The low level Communist Party representative Wen Chang (BD Wong) is on hand to translate, although Saul takes it upon himself to promote Wen as coach of the Beijing University team.
The play toggles to 1989, when the Party invites the over-the-hill Slezac—still coaching at the University of San Francisco—and his team to Beijing for a friendly match. Not so friendly in intent, it turns out; Slezac had announced to the press in 1971 that “no Chinese team will ever beat an American team,” and that statement still rankles the Party. The culminating basketball game occurs, literally, within earshot of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre. (The events appear to be fictional, although Yee tells us that the play is “inspired by events from her father’s life.”)
What makes things interesting, adds drama, and shoehorns in an affecting personal interest plot line, is the involvement of Manford (Tony Aidan Vo). This son-of-an-immigrant is a high school senior who terrorizes the courts of Chinatown even though he is short—even shorter than Saul, who as it turns out was the last point guard under six feet to play for USF. Manford, it seems, has a private reason for wanting to play this one game at Beijing University.
Yee is the up-and-coming playwright—from San Francisco, via Yale—who was introduced to New York audiences in September 2013 with The Hatmaker’s Wife (produced by The Playwrights Realm in the upstairs space at Playwrights Horizons). I found that play intriguing but sprawling, over-packed and unconvincing; something like one of those fancifully imaginative plays where the fanciful imagination doesn’t translate from the page to the stage (or, rather, from the stage to the patrons in the seats). I only mention this because despite my lukewarm review at the time, Yee’s Hatmaker has remained in my imagination far longer than any number of plays I’ve seen in the interim. So even before taking the elevator down to the Atlantic Theater’s second stage in the lower depths of the Google Building in Chelsea, I was intrigued by what she might have on offer.
This time out, the playwright is in thorough control. She manages to mix the sweep of the Chinese and American dynamics, the humor of her borscht-belt-like Ugly American, and the harsh-but-tender family drama. And basketball, yes: a script note tells us that “the game is reflected not just in the subject matter but the rhythm, structure, language, and how the characters move through space.”
This is evident not only on the page but in the staging by Taibi Magar, who previously impressed us with Ars Nova’s Underground Railroad Game. (Talk about plays you can’t quite forget….) Working on a small space with the deck taped like the floor of a basketball court, Magar whirls us through time and place on the spare set from Takeshi Kata. She also manages to give us some thrilling basketball action with only one player (Manford), no basket, and barely a Spalding in site. All this plus increasing flashes of Tiananmen Square, courtesy of projection designer David Bengali.
Eisenberg, a familiar character man from Rocky, Golden Boy and elsewhere, gives a thoroughly droll performance as the foul-mouthed, washed-up American coach. Vo matches him as the brash young point guard, doing a fine job making us believe we are watching real basketball. There is also able support from Ali Ahn, as Manford’s close cousin and adviser.
The performance of the evening, though, comes from Wong, who grows from timid Communist underling to what we, in the West, would consider a man. Narrating the story all the while. I don’t know that I’ve seen him give such an affecting performance since M. Butterfly; yes, this performance says, despite his years of success in myriad fields, he is still an actor.
The Great Leap opened June 4, 2018 at Atlantic Stage 2 and runs through June 24. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
